Core decisions
What
In my observations of literacy instruction in the third-grade classroom in which I am teaching, I have noticed that while the teacher asks a lot of questions about texts, they are rarely of a nature that provokes thoughtful inquiry or investigation. For example, questions may relate to defining vocabulary through context cues, or providing content based on paragraphs which students have already read. The only times in which I have observed the teacher asking questions to frame students’ reading have come during teacher read-alouds.
For this lesson, my partner and I determined that we wanted to give students the opportunity to practice using reading as a tool for inquiry, by using questions to frame student reading tasks. In order to support this, I ended up structuring my plan around a mini-lesson on one particular reading skill: skimming for relevant vocabulary in order to find which pages and paragraphs were most likely to contain answers to guiding questions. This mini-lesson was then followed by a period for students to practice both the overall strategy (reading with a question in mind) and the specific skill (skimming).
The topical content of the lesson – food chains – was selected because it was relevant to the literacy lessons in Imagine It! being used in both my own classroom and my partner’s in the relevant weeks. That way, it could both provide students with an authentic connection which could drive engagement, and also be familiar enough to not need much teacher explanation. All texts selected were non-fiction, though I would have been open to using fiction if I had found an appropriate fictional text with a clear depiction of food chains.
How
The lesson is comprised of three parts. The first part, a guided mini-lesson on the strategy and skill described above, was designed to begin with teacher modeling, and progress into guided practice (with students sharing a teacher-selected text but looking together for particular information).
For the second part, using a guiding question presented by the teacher (“What food chains do you find in different settings?”), students are sent in pairs to look through a variety of reading materials to identify and record as many answers to the question as possible. I sought to connect this to my overarching Term III question – regarding the use of partner work as a tool for differentiated instruction – by having the students do their reading collaboratively. The reading materials for each pair include readings chosen to be appropriate for a variety of reading levels. While this served as a bit of an experiment for me – which readings would the students choose? – I believe that any of the choices could be instructionally valuable (the more basic texts would be accessible to both partners; with the more advanced texts, the more-proficient reader could support their partner’s reading).
The final part, a whole-group discussion, serves multiple purposes. In allowing students to share what they have learned, it reinforces the value of their inquiry, and provides the teacher with an opportunity to assess them. It also allows the teacher to reinforce the overall strategy of reading to answer questions by prompting students to generate new questions – thus demonstrating that the process of generating questions and the process of reading to answer them can be interrelated rather than unidirectional. While this last part was more implicit than explicit, it could effectively set up a subsequent lesson focusing on this more advanced use of strategy.
In terms of my own pedagogical strategies, the most important one is that, after my initial modeling, I intended to turn over as much responsibility to students as possible. During the initial discussion and guided reading section, I will provide some modeling, but want to devote most of the focus to asking questions and having the students think through the concepts themselves. During the independent reading section, I will float around, providing tips and answering questions when students seem off-track, but also attempting to be a silent observer as much as possible.
Why
The content and structure of this lesson reflects several of my most important beliefs relating to literacy and pedagogy. I placed an emphasis on collaboration because I believe that this would provide an opportunity for less-proficient readers to observe the strategies used by more-proficient readers, and to get peer support with difficult passages – but also because I believe that collaborative work could be beneficial as well as more engaging to both partners. In this, I was inspired in large part by the chapter from Fountas and Pinnell (1996) on flexible grouping (although I lacked the thorough insight into student literacy skills and needs to have designed my groups as thoughtfully as the authors suggest). My groups included two students who were among the class’s highest-level readers (according to DRA assessments) and two who were among the lowest (one of whom is an English Language Learner).
I saw the choice of lesson – reading to answer a question – as an important corrective to the fairly decontextualized reading that happens elsewhere in the classroom. I wanted students to get the opportunity to see reading as a means to an end, rather than an end to itself. Further, I hoped that, by focusing on the question to be answered, students who otherwise might act stressed out by reading tasks (which I believe can be true of one or two of the students in my chosen group) would be more focused on the content and feel less pressured to read every word perfectly. To be clear, I think this is a totally valid approach to promoting literacy, because it can help make reading a more accessible task, and because it focuses students on meaning-making, which is of course a primary component of reading informational texts. Meanwhile, unlike essentially every other reading exercise I have done with my students, my focus would be less on their technical proficiency and more on their ability to make use of reading with a particular purpose.
Finally, I wanted to give the students opportunities to weave other strategies, prior knowledge, and personal connections into the lesson. This played a role both in the selection of a topic which students had been exposed to in class, as well as in the lesson’s pedagogical choices, such as: the use of open-ended questions (soliciting student thoughts regarding strategies rather than immediately teaching about skimming); the selection of a variety of content materials (including texts about a variety of habitats, some of which students might have prior familiarity with); teacher modeling of making personal connections; and extensive opportunities for independent discussion.
In my observations of literacy instruction in the third-grade classroom in which I am teaching, I have noticed that while the teacher asks a lot of questions about texts, they are rarely of a nature that provokes thoughtful inquiry or investigation. For example, questions may relate to defining vocabulary through context cues, or providing content based on paragraphs which students have already read. The only times in which I have observed the teacher asking questions to frame students’ reading have come during teacher read-alouds.
For this lesson, my partner and I determined that we wanted to give students the opportunity to practice using reading as a tool for inquiry, by using questions to frame student reading tasks. In order to support this, I ended up structuring my plan around a mini-lesson on one particular reading skill: skimming for relevant vocabulary in order to find which pages and paragraphs were most likely to contain answers to guiding questions. This mini-lesson was then followed by a period for students to practice both the overall strategy (reading with a question in mind) and the specific skill (skimming).
The topical content of the lesson – food chains – was selected because it was relevant to the literacy lessons in Imagine It! being used in both my own classroom and my partner’s in the relevant weeks. That way, it could both provide students with an authentic connection which could drive engagement, and also be familiar enough to not need much teacher explanation. All texts selected were non-fiction, though I would have been open to using fiction if I had found an appropriate fictional text with a clear depiction of food chains.
How
The lesson is comprised of three parts. The first part, a guided mini-lesson on the strategy and skill described above, was designed to begin with teacher modeling, and progress into guided practice (with students sharing a teacher-selected text but looking together for particular information).
For the second part, using a guiding question presented by the teacher (“What food chains do you find in different settings?”), students are sent in pairs to look through a variety of reading materials to identify and record as many answers to the question as possible. I sought to connect this to my overarching Term III question – regarding the use of partner work as a tool for differentiated instruction – by having the students do their reading collaboratively. The reading materials for each pair include readings chosen to be appropriate for a variety of reading levels. While this served as a bit of an experiment for me – which readings would the students choose? – I believe that any of the choices could be instructionally valuable (the more basic texts would be accessible to both partners; with the more advanced texts, the more-proficient reader could support their partner’s reading).
The final part, a whole-group discussion, serves multiple purposes. In allowing students to share what they have learned, it reinforces the value of their inquiry, and provides the teacher with an opportunity to assess them. It also allows the teacher to reinforce the overall strategy of reading to answer questions by prompting students to generate new questions – thus demonstrating that the process of generating questions and the process of reading to answer them can be interrelated rather than unidirectional. While this last part was more implicit than explicit, it could effectively set up a subsequent lesson focusing on this more advanced use of strategy.
In terms of my own pedagogical strategies, the most important one is that, after my initial modeling, I intended to turn over as much responsibility to students as possible. During the initial discussion and guided reading section, I will provide some modeling, but want to devote most of the focus to asking questions and having the students think through the concepts themselves. During the independent reading section, I will float around, providing tips and answering questions when students seem off-track, but also attempting to be a silent observer as much as possible.
Why
The content and structure of this lesson reflects several of my most important beliefs relating to literacy and pedagogy. I placed an emphasis on collaboration because I believe that this would provide an opportunity for less-proficient readers to observe the strategies used by more-proficient readers, and to get peer support with difficult passages – but also because I believe that collaborative work could be beneficial as well as more engaging to both partners. In this, I was inspired in large part by the chapter from Fountas and Pinnell (1996) on flexible grouping (although I lacked the thorough insight into student literacy skills and needs to have designed my groups as thoughtfully as the authors suggest). My groups included two students who were among the class’s highest-level readers (according to DRA assessments) and two who were among the lowest (one of whom is an English Language Learner).
I saw the choice of lesson – reading to answer a question – as an important corrective to the fairly decontextualized reading that happens elsewhere in the classroom. I wanted students to get the opportunity to see reading as a means to an end, rather than an end to itself. Further, I hoped that, by focusing on the question to be answered, students who otherwise might act stressed out by reading tasks (which I believe can be true of one or two of the students in my chosen group) would be more focused on the content and feel less pressured to read every word perfectly. To be clear, I think this is a totally valid approach to promoting literacy, because it can help make reading a more accessible task, and because it focuses students on meaning-making, which is of course a primary component of reading informational texts. Meanwhile, unlike essentially every other reading exercise I have done with my students, my focus would be less on their technical proficiency and more on their ability to make use of reading with a particular purpose.
Finally, I wanted to give the students opportunities to weave other strategies, prior knowledge, and personal connections into the lesson. This played a role both in the selection of a topic which students had been exposed to in class, as well as in the lesson’s pedagogical choices, such as: the use of open-ended questions (soliciting student thoughts regarding strategies rather than immediately teaching about skimming); the selection of a variety of content materials (including texts about a variety of habitats, some of which students might have prior familiarity with); teacher modeling of making personal connections; and extensive opportunities for independent discussion.